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November Together Retro: Time Travelers Never Die

Re: November Together Retro: Time Travelers Never Die

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2018 11:59 pm

by prfsnl_gmr

Xeogred wrote:Bone and I are huge fans of Lost Vikings. That's one I love going back to every few years. The Genesis version actually has some extra music for one world and an extra stage or few, but it's like impossible on a normal 3-button pad haha. Pretty sure it supports the 6-button pad though and was playable that way. Overall I still prefer the SNES version for sure though. Sadly the sequel isn't half as awesome as the first. Still worth playing and the SNES version is super different compared to the PC/PSX version (which has completely new graphics and music), but yeah. The first is way better.

+1

The Lost Vikings is Blizzard’s best game.

Re: November Together Retro: Time Travelers Never Die

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 1:50 am

by CFFJR

Well, I've just beaten Shadow of Destiny, the PS2 version. I got ending E (of a possible eight) which was satisfying.

The game has kind of a slow start, but once things got going I have to say it pulled me in.

The city of Lebensbaum is nice and prompts an urge to explore. Unfortunately, it's also pretty empty, and there really isn't much to find in the town itself. More rewarding though are side quests and conversations you can encounter with the small handful of npcs in each time period you visit. It's less about the barren world and more about the people in it, who also, admittedly, don't have much background, but there are connections you can make with a bit of effort (you won't find some of this stuff if you immediately go where the digipad tells you) and doing so was fun, at least to me.

It can indeed be very silly though. One of main character Eike's many deaths is prevented incidentally when an npc breaks the murder weapon. It just happens as a result of other events occurring and it's very much an afterthought for that particular chapter. And that's a very small example in a time travel story where the hero is completely reckless in every time period he visits. Other time travel stories would be having fits over all the changes he creates over the course of this game, some of which are really subject to your whims (is it a museum or a library? Porque no los dos?) rather than the need of the story.

This game turned out to be more than I expected when I first started playing it. Years ago, I might have settled in to getting all of the endings, finding all of the events (the game tracks you completion percentage for the whole game as well as each individual chapter) and screwing with time in a variety of ways. Now I'm content to look up the endings and seeing what I missed in guides from the time. Having done a bit of that already, I'm pleased to say a hunch I had about Eike's history partway through the game turned out to be true per other endings, and it's amusing to see the way game shined a light on this fact in the ending I got without actually saying it.

Speaking of the endings, it seems that any time you're about to make a choice that will affect what ending you get, Eike will have, let's call it a moment of clarity, where he realizes what he's doing could be important. You then get a second chance to decide if that's how you want to proceed. The first time this happened, I actually backpedaled, and doing that changed my ending, for the better I'd say. It's nice that the game is kind enough to signpost things like this for you if you're interested in seeing every outcome, even if I didn't entirely catch on to what was happening the first time.

Anyway, I'm not calling it a masterpiece by any stretch. Gameplay wise you could argue that it was probably dated even for it's time, but I genuinely liked it.

Re: November Together Retro: Time Travelers Never Die

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 2:34 am

by MrPopo

I just finished Soul Reaver 2, and it was quite good. Definitely better than the first because they were able to realize what they were going for much better. It does end on yet another cliffhanger, though it isn't quite as bad as the first game's cliffhanger (which was a consequence of them realizing the game was too big a la Golden Sun).

Re: November Together Retro: Time Travelers Never Die

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 9:45 am

by BoneSnapDeez

Markies wrote:However, the combat is very restrictive. I have died too many times running into enemies that are able to kill me faster. Also, doing 75 things in a level, have one Viking die and then get to do it all over again is super annoying.

There are parts that are annoying and frustrating, but I have been enjoying it overall. The game is quite fun and I do love the little quips. It's not bad.

Yeah, big fan of this one overall. SNES original is the best.

You'll find that most all levels can be attacked in one of two ways. Either split up the three vikings, head down three pathways, and then congregate at the end; or, mosey through the stage together with Olaf taking the lead as defense.

You have a ways to go. Good luck!

Re: November Together Retro: Time Travelers Never Die

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 9:57 am

by noiseredux

so at the beginning of the month I started Oracle Of Seasons, then was planning to to play Chrono Trigger but didn't get it in time. So I just sorta stalled out this month. But, the month's not over and I don't really feel like spending money on new games between now and Christmas so I should be able to get back to Oracle of Seasons before the month's over.

Re: November Together Retro: Time Travelers Never Die

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 11:19 am

by Exhuminator

noiseredux wrote:I should be able to get back to Oracle of Seasons before the month's over.

Just to let you know, HLTB blue lists OoS at 15.5 hours long. If you started played it every day for the rest of this month (including today) that averages to about 1.2 hours per day to finish.

I don't know if you remember or not, but when Ages and Seasons released, one was supposed to be more puzzle oriented (Ages) and the other more combat oriented (Seasons). I beat Ages back when it released in 2001, enjoyed it tremendously. But for some reason despite trying twice, I still haven't finished Seasons. It has yet to suck me in like Ages did. The last time I played Seasons was back in 2007 IIRC. I remember quitting at the part where I was fighting one of the four golden monsters. The fight was a drag and honestly I don't play Zelda for its combat. That said I purchased Seasons off the 3DS eShop a few years ago with the intent of finally beating it. Someday.

Re: November Together Retro: Time Travelers Never Die

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 11:45 am

by noiseredux

Exhuminator wrote:Just to let you know, HLTB blue lists OoS at 15.5 hours long. If you started played it every day for the rest of this month (including today) that averages to about 1.2 hours per day to finish.

15 hrs is certainly manageable. And I've probably already put in 2 hrs. So I think I can pull it off. I generally don't game much on Fridays or Saturdays, but heck, I recently beat LTTP and Skyrim each in a single week. So I should have no problem polishing this one off. I'll get cracking tonight!

Re: November Together Retro: Time Travelers Never Die

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 8:21 pm

by Markies

Xeogred wrote:Bone and I are huge fans of Lost Vikings. That's one I love going back to every few years. The Genesis version actually has some extra music for one world and an extra stage or few, but it's like impossible on a normal 3-button pad haha. Pretty sure it supports the 6-button pad though and was playable that way. Overall I still prefer the SNES version for sure though. Sadly the sequel isn't half as awesome as the first. Still worth playing and the SNES version is super different compared to the PC/PSX version (which has completely new graphics and music), but yeah. The first is way better.

Yeah, the differences in the games have been really interesting. I read about the Genesis version having extra levels. Since my regular Genesis controller is the 6 Button controller, I was thinking of picking it up as well.

Also, I read that the sequel, Lost Vikings 2, has changes with their ports. The SNES version is very akin to the prequel, 2D with cartoony graphics. However, the Saturn/PS1 port is completely different with voice overs and cut scenes. It is amazing that Blizzard would go into all this trouble for all the different ports of the game.

BoneSnapDeez wrote:You'll find that most all levels can be attacked in one of two ways. Either split up the three vikings, head down three pathways, and then congregate at the end; or, mosey through the stage together with Olaf taking the lead as defense.

You have a ways to go. Good luck!

I have definitely been doing the old mosey route. I started with exploring with Erik, but he is too much of a squishy. Having Olaf take the lead has been much easier. The three of them combined can do some damage.

Each stage is getting longer and harder, so I may have less stages to go, it will take longer. It is my plan to play it during the Thanksgiving holiday.

Re: November Together Retro: Time Travelers Never Die

Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2018 9:27 am

by noiseredux

Delving back into Oracle Of Seasons, I beat the Snake's Remains dungeon. So now I've got the strong bracelet. The boss battle was kind of interesting, but not overly difficult to figure out. Though I find switching weapons mid-battle cumbersome. See, I'm so used to having the sword be B and the secondary weapon being A, that I'm still not used to just equipping two secondaries as A and B. I forget you can do that. And it seems weird in my head. So I kept having to switch between bombs and bracelet in that fight just because I think of them as A-button weapons.

Moving on, it was mentioned that I should head to a swamp to the west. There's still a lot of the overworld map left unexplored. Yikes. I can't say that I find the flow of Seasons all that great. Not that I want a super-linear Zelda game exactly. But I don't know - I feel like compared to Link To The Past or Link's Awakening, I find myself sort of 'lost' more often in Oracle Of Seasons. Then again, I know those games pretty inside-and-out from playing them so much over the years. I also don't recall having the same problem with Oracle Of Ages - of course I played that like a decade ago so who knows.

I'll probably just find a guide to point me to each new dungeon. I like the dungeons in this game far more than I like exploring its overworld.

Re: November Together Retro: Time Travelers Never Die

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2018 9:17 am

by noiseredux

My reinvigorated enthusiasm for Oracle Of Ages has rather quickly diminished. I spent some more time with it last night, but I wasn't really sure where to go. The swamp out west was mentioned so I headed there. And I found it... kind of. But I wasn't sure how to enter. There was no tree stumps around to let me change seasons, but it seemed like that's probably what had to be done. And on that note, I guess I should concede that probably my biggest hang-up with this game is that most of the overworld stuff does revolve around changing the seasons - not a shocker, given the title. But I don't especially care for this stuff. I get that it sort of riffs on the time-bending in LTTP, Ocarina Of Time and Majora's Mask. But I don't find it especially fun. Honestly, I just kind of want to go from one dungeon to the next, find the item in that dungeon that I need to beat the boss, rinse and repeat.

So I figured I'd check look up a walkthrough to help see what I should be going next. And then the walkthrough said that next I should be meeting three animals and deciding which will be my companion. And that two of the animals required doing side quests to get to them. And so I wondered if I could skip those two and just go for the one that doesn't require side quests, but reading through pages of the walkthrough I couldn't quite figure out how to skip straight to that part. And finally, I just decided that this seems like 'work' and I'm not really having fun with it. I don't think Oracle Of Seasons is the 2D Zelda game that I want it to be. And that's not the game's fault. But eh, I'm kind of all set I think.